a/n: warning: this story will be changing from "T" to "M" for violence, some language, & future smut. Sorry to those who may not like that. But I promise I keep everything in good taste.
October 11, 2011
5:53 p.m.
Thump…thump…thump…
As if it were already in his hands, Sebastian could hear the human's frantic heartbeat like that of a cornered rabbit's on the verge of its death shriek. The moment she had awoken from being bludgeoned across the back of her soft human head with one of her ugly bedside table lamps, she was subjected to further pain and perhaps soon, humiliation.
Across from the Orianthe apartment complex, he stood atop a lonely rooftop with his elegant hands resting on its ledge. From here he could see across one of the United State's brightest cities. Only once before had he seen it burn brighter; in 1906 when the entire city after an earthquake had burnt itself down to a pitiful crisp.
"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone," he quoted Jack London beneath a warm cloud of breath.
Gazing to the city in this day and age, nothing beautiful had been birthed from those ashes, just pissed-stained cement.
From his rainy perch, he counted the lit windows of the Orianthe till he came to Patrice Well's gloomy window, where shadows ominously flickered to and fro. Sebastian counted three men who masked themselves as farm animals as they pillaged her sad excuse of a flat.
"They will be lucky to find anything of even meager value," he calmly said to himself.
Patrice Wells was a terribly pathetic excuse for a human being, an even more pathetic excuse for a Phantomhive descendent. A once thick stew of a bloodline had become thin as well water and perhaps just as tasteless.
So, why was he here? This he found himself wondering over Patrice's desperate attempt at a scream soon hushed by a hand.
No one was going to hear her over the blare of car alarms anyway. Even if someone did hear; a frightened scream could not be new in this wretched neighborhood.
"These voyeuristic tendencies of yours are beginning to make me wonder if you truly are going mad in your old age," uttered a soft, child-like voice from the dark fog and cold rain. "After all, your standards clearly have fallen to the bottom of the bucket."
Sebastian's heavily lashed eyes, the color of divine wine, winced with subtle annoyance. "I thought you said that you would never venture over to the United States of America; something about ungrateful, disobedient curs?"
Seated on the very ledge Sebastian leaned upon, Ciel sat down, crossed his right leg over his left, appearing no older or less dignified than the day his soul was sealed away.
"Senile also comes with old age," snidely volleyed the eternal child, turning his cerulean eyes away from Sebastian and out to San Francisco's waters in the distance. "This country is only two-hundred and thirty-five-years-old. By the layers of filth, you would think it much older."
"Already counting decades and centuries, yet you are still so very new," a cruel smirk curled Sebastian's lips. "Try not to blush when you think of how lengthy an eternity can be."
Ciel captured Sebastian in his intense eyes. "Laugh all you want. If anything, I am in a better situation than you. The world is still a mystery, while you have probably turned over every stone, swam to the depths of every ocean, and now pout in your boredom—"
From across the street through Patrice's window, he caught sight of her near naked body.
The young demon curled his lip in disgust, "Are you just going to stand there while they violate her? Because her squealing reminds one of a cornered sow."
A wind picked up, dancing the foul smell of flooded sewer beneath their noses. Sebastian made no effort to hurriedly answer Ciel. He was no longer bound by contract to do anything in the child's favor.
"Whether I stand here or not depends entirely on her," he patiently replied.
Ciel raised an incredulous brow, "And what does that mean?"
His former butler kept a focused gaze on Patrice's window, "patience is a virtue, Ciel Phantomhive."
Maybe it was the smugness in his voice; maybe it was being addressed by his full name by a former servant, or maybe it was just the vague reply entirely that pinched Ciel's last nerve for the night in this wretched city.
"Humph," the boy took an abrupt stance. "Do not pretend that virtue, or any of them for that matter, mean a damned thing to you."
Turning on his heel, Ciel elegantly hopped and soundlessly landed below on a wet, rickety fire escape. About to make a traceless leave, something kept his small feet firmly planted on the rusty steel beneath them. It was a something that perked his veins, made the echoes of emptiness roar in the depths of a tiny, yet ferocious belly.
"Now you feel it," knowingly said the seasoned demon, down to the child whose eyes ignited a hellish red. "It is almost impossible to ignore the sound, the smell, and the taste of a human soul when they begin to question the faith of their god."
"Th-that's what this is?" shuddered Ciel in repulsion.
"Why, yes. Surely you must still remember the moment when you were human; desperate and weak, that you renounced your faith in the god that shared no miracle. Then you reached out for a thread and savior."
Ciel fought back the raging desire to leap from the fire escape and claw through Patrice Well's window and into her living room, where her soul was ripe for the picking. Teeth grit behind tightly sealed lips, he strictly turned away from the dinner bell.
At the sight of his former master's agony, Sebastian took great joy and advantage. "I'm afraid that tonight you will again go hungry. No longer is it my duty to attend to that empty belly and I cannot offer you even a scrap of generosity. If Patrice Well's wills it, I will be the only to dine on her."
Bringing himself up onto the ledge, he straightened out his finely tailored coat and wiped his wet hair from his handsome face. "Do yourself a favor and give into your nature. Or live forever in agony."
Pain was such an intense sensation, yet she never had it ring throughout her entire head like the toll of a bell. Her skull felt fragile, the young mind inside caught in a daze as her legs gave way and her knees slammed into the freshly polished wood floors of Orianthe apartment's four-hundred-twenty-ninth room. Patrice tumbled off to the side, the right side of her jaw taking the brunt of the fall. For what seemed like a moment all had gone dark, but when she woke, she was being dragged toward her foul smelling couch.
Rough, cold hands latching to her arms, they pulled her deadweight onto the couch. Barely clinging to consciousness, Patrice peered through blurry eyes and dark, sticky eyelashes as three figures pillaged her apartment. Home invasion, burglary, and theft were not unknown evils to her. But the only thought she managed to stick with as her mind lay in disarray like so many papers flung off a desk, was that she had no wealth or honey to attract these wasps. Why me, she wondered in her throbbing agony.
They kept her apartment dark, not switching on any lights or even flashlights as they tore every drawer open, ripped cabinets from their hinges, and dug through her closets.
"There's nothing here," one grumbled, flinging her mattress over its dirty box spring, "Nothing but text books and bread crumbs!"
Down the hall from Patrice's gloomy bedroom, a tall shelf was torn down and gutted ninety-nine cent romance novel by ninety-nine cent romance novel. "This girl has shit," agreed a second voice. "Why did we come here again?"
"Because the back door was open like he said it'd be," roughly answered the third and last intruder, who stood beside the arm rest of the couch where Patrice's head laid closest to. "Gather the text books, we could sell them online."
Having not sensed him, the sound and nearness of the third intruder's voice startled Patrice back into full-consciousness, yet she didn't make a single move. Instead she lay there, desperately hoping they would just leave.
The third intruder scratched beneath his vinyl pig mask that he had dug out from a convenience store's holiday clearance bin last October. "She's a student at SFSU, so she has to at least have a damn laptop or ipod lying around here," he snarled, rounding the couch to stand beside Patrice's limp body.
"I've checked everywhere, there's no—"
"Check again!" irritably squealed the pig. "Look for a backpack she might have flung around somewhere in this rat's nest."
This apartment was a rat's nest and Patrice knew she was a pathetic excuse for a young human being. Even so, she had no desire to die tonight. They could have her laptop. They could have whatever material possession they could find of hers, as long as they just took it all and left her alone.
Lying there as still as the dead, she could hear her heartbeat and feel it pounding against the inside of her ribcage. She tried to take as shallow breaths as she could to not bring a single ounce of attention towards herself, yet the pain at the back of her head made Patrice want to sob so badly.
"I found something!" harshly came a whisper. "I think this is her backpack. It's pretty damn heavy…"
"Open it," urged his companion, who left Patrice's overturned room.
Their approving whispers said that they had found her laptop. A rustling followed next and she guessed that they heeded the pig-faced intruder's directions to gather her expensive secondhand textbooks.
Just leave. Please just leave, she prayed in thought.
The sounds of their heavy footsteps gathered at the door. It was quiet and she held her eyes closed as naturally as she could. They were going to leave. There was nothing else here that they could want.
A silence lingered in the apartment's musty air. Patrice no longer heard others and so as carefully as possible, she opened her left eye just a sliver.
"Good, you're awake," breathed the swine, inches from her face.
Patrice's eyes flared open in terror and a gasp as she bolted up. With all her instinct and might she kangaroo-kicked the intruder in the chest. Stumbling back briefly, he quickly caught his footing and viciously jabbed a finger in Patrice's direction as she clamored to her feet.
"Hel-!" mouth opening to yell, a hairy-knuckled hand roughly smothered her half-spoken plea.
A wobbly-chinned horse mask leant over Patrice's shoulder and its wearer barred his arm across her chest. As she struggled to break free and call for help, she sank her teeth desperately into the man's thick fingers.
"She fuckin' bit me!" he yelled,
Patrice tasted blood and it made her gag in his arms. In place of a bloodied fingered hand, a thick piece of duct tape was slapped across her mouth and her arms yanked behind her back. Flung stomach first onto the couch, the man in the horse mask was joined by another in a sheep mask, and together they held her down and duct taped her hands behind her back.
Rolled onto her back when they were done, the horse-masked man wound up his bloodied hand in a tight fist and punched Patrice across the head twice. Again the bells were ringing and she swallowed down a sudden vomit. There was a warm sensation now creeping downward from her forehead and nostrils.
"Damn, stop it Shane," warned the sheep-masked man. "You'll kill her that way."
"That bitch practically took a chunk out of me!" angrily replied his partner.
Their argument hardly made any sense to Patrice. Nothing made sense right now. Her head spun and yet she knew she was lying still, unable to scream and unable to move with duct tape binding her escape. Slowly her glasses slipped from her face, oiled with sweat and blood. Her body broke out in tremors of fear as the pig-faced man dug his knee into the couch and peered down to her with empty amber eyes.
"Behind those glasses and all that matted hair, you're almost attractive," he drawled, pushing Patrice's untamed bangs back from her face. "Almost."
Don't touch me, she thought in disgust. Eyes wide with fear, she shook her head to get his dry hands off of her. The gesture only made him laugh. The other men were waiting for something, perhaps a direction to take with this. That direction came with the pig-faced man grabbing at her hips and roughly pulling her lower half towards him.
Patrice began to kick and thrash, unaware of how hard she was sobbing behind the tape.
"Hold her still," he harshly whispered to the other two.
One held her down by the shoulders, as the man with the bloodied hand reached gingerly back into his pocket and dislodged a switch blade that sprung to Patrice's attention not even an inch from her nose.
"Stop making a fuss," he warned, tone inflected still by the bitterness from her having bit his hand. "If you're a good and quiet little girl, we'll finish up quickly and leave you be."
Roughly thumbing tears from her cheeks, he gave the one in charge a bit more room.
Pants unbuttoned and unzipped, she whimpered feeling herself separated from her clothes. The apartment felt colder than it ever had. Jeans tossed to the floor, lumpy gray sweater pushed up over her breasts in their plain flesh toned bra; she closed her eyes and tried to pray. Unable to speak, her voice echoed in her head so loudly. Please don't, she thought. Please, God, make them leave me alone. Why is it always me? Why me? Why?
"It doesn't have to be you," cooed a tempting and familiar voice within her mind, though not her own. "How presumptuous of you to believe that your god is listening, when there are billions of others begging for his graces that go unanswered."
The voice was right. Why would God help her now? He had never done so before, no matter how loudly she begged through prayer.
Eyes still tightly closed, not wanting to see the animal-faced men, she could feel their hands on her naked skin, trying to rip the last of her clothes off. She clenched her legs and tightened her body, unwilling to give up just yet.
Someone help me, her thoughts pleaded. Maybe her neighbors from downstairs heard the ruckus? Maybe the foul little land lady and her ugly son would come to her door with a complaint of too much noise—at this point, she didn't care who she would be indebted to. The tears made her flushed cheeks sticky and mucus silently began to choke her.
"Patrice, I did say that it does not always have to be you," continued the smooth, deep voice. "I could help you I could set you free from your ill-fate, in exchange for only your soul. But if you choose not to call on me, I have no choice but to let them violate and kill you. We both know that men like these will not let you go free. They never let any of the others live."
The eye in her mind suddenly opened to a world, a world of infinite black and twisted trees erect from gray soil dappled by shards of bone. "Where am I?" she felt her lips move, no tape to silence her in limbo.
"A wish, a sacrifice, and a contract that would bind you and I," his voice penetrated the black and off in the immeasurable distance, the silhouette of a tall ferocious winged beast.
Patrice felt coldness in her bones, yet was not nearly as frightened in this world as she was in the other. "I don't understand. Who are you?" she stepped forward not from bravery, only deep wonder.
"I could be whoever you want me to be," it answered.
"It's you again," whispered Patrice. "The butler, Sebastian Michaelis…what do you want from me?"
The shadow emanated an elegant, almost alluring laughter. "Your time is running out. Tell me what you desire and I will make it so, after a sacrifice of blood. Then we will have time for as many questions as you like."
Cold hands, rough hands—she could feel them. They crawled up her skin and greedily groped at her flesh, trying to pry her legs apart.
"I want them to stop. My desire is for them to stop—"
"And I will stop them," the voice hushed its impatience for her to find direction. "What do you want, Patrice? Why is it not fair for you to die tonight—what have you yet to achieve that you so desperately want to before you shuffle of this mortal coil?"
There were so many things that she wanted, only now did they seem insignificant compared to the gift of life. "I-I want…I want to…" her meek voice trailed off in helpless sobs.
The deep black began to churn, as if they lay beneath the surface of a full cauldron over rising flame. "What is your wish?"
"I want to live, butler!" shouted Patrice. "I want to live a life better than the one I've led. I want to be somebody and I want the chance to love and be loved by others!"
There was a silence on the other end; could he make a contract out of that? Her wish was to live in the light, contrary to many of those before her.
"Consider the wish accepted. Now, do you forsake God? Think carefully about this," he cautioned, about to recite a line he's said for thousands of years in so many tongues. "If you once reject your faith, the gates of paradise will forever be closed to you."
She stood open-mouthed at the horrors of hell.
At the edge of the proverbial seat, he watched Patrice wince and squirm in disgust of the hands and hot grunts she could feel against her flesh. "I'll ask but once more: do you wish to make a contract?"
"Y…yes. Yes, I do! Just hurry, please! Make them stop!" she shouted.
All at once her reality came rushing back just in time to see the hands of her animal-faced attackers, recede as their expressions twisted in puzzlement of falling black feathers and shadows that crept forth from their respected corners.
Without glasses, their features were blurred to her and she strained to see what they were gawking at. All shadow massed at the front door, looming over them menacingly as the feathers dropped. There were screams, loud, wretched, and wet. Blood sprayed in all direction, sopping up the smelly couch, the stained rugs, and cat-scratched curtains. It splattered across her face, down her front. The feel of blood and it's warm, sticky consistency was not new and yet she shuddered.
Three tattered bodies he piled neatly in the middle of the living room. Without human form, he was again a frightening mass without title. "A name," he breathed calmly. "I need a name. As I said before, I can be whoever you like me to be."
Disorientated by the blurred sight of death, realizing her binds had somehow been cut, Patrice slowly got to her feet and backed away toward the window where she blindly felt for the curtains. Bringing them over her near nakedness, she squinted trying to make sense of this force of primal evil. "Wh-whoever I like?" she quietly repeated.
"Yes," he affirmed with a toothy grin.
Fingers curling tight into the curtains, she pressed them hard against her bare skin. "Sebastian Michaelis suited you just fine. I don't…I don't care to name you any other."
Sebastian nodded his head in a silence as his body shrank back into the shell she preferred. "Your bloodline continues to lack imagination. That is just fine then. I suppose I have grown very accustomed to this name and this body."
He peered down to the piled corpses, oozing blood from every tear he inflicted on them without a single mercy. Such a mess he has made. But when Sebastian turned back to Patrice, she was no longer in sight, though a window beat against its frame in the wind and rain.
Rusty metal screeched and rattled as she climbed down the fire escape, clinging to the bloody curtain that she ripped from its rings to wrap around her body. The ladder slimy from rain, her grip soon slipped, sending her clattering to the alley way below.
No pain was greater than the one in her head, so she ignored her ripped knees to jump to her feet. Patrice ran down the alley, pushing passed a nest of homeless men who shook their wet styrofoam cups at her as she tore passed.
When she came from the alley, she started down the sidewalks, San Francisco's steep hills burning her legs as she went. Attracted by a flickering light in another alley, she collapsed behind three trashcans overflowing with garbage. There on her side, her blurry eyes watched blood wash from her skin, dilute, and pool around her body.
The world no longer made sense. In just two days, she had gone from understanding her place in the world, to thinking that she had gone completely insane. Had there really been men in her apartment? Had they really tried to hurt her? Had she in fact made a deal with a well-dressed and well-mannered devil?
"There is one last thing," whispered Sebastian, kneeling down in the rain beside her.
Patrice turned her cheek from the cement and looked to his blurred face, surprised he had found her at all.
"Where shall I put the mark of our contract?" he simply asked, tucking a bit of raven hair behind his ear.
Though her mouth opened, there were no words. Her human soul had been through enough for the time being, and so she just lay there in the rain behind garbage, mute and no better than a stray cat.
Sebastian elegantly inclined his head, "forgive me then if you find my choice unfavorable in the future, but since you are unable to speak at the moment…"
Taking an ungloved hand, his index finger pointed and touched the middle of her sternum and slowly slipped it down the center of her chest and stopped just above where her breasts met. "Here will do just fine," he said with a polite smile.
"A-ah…" Patrice whimpered, feeling a sharp fingernail dig into her skin and precisely carve.
When he was done, Sebastian regained his tall stance and brought his bloody fingertip to his parted lips. Her blood dripped warm onto his tongue as he admired his handy work. Satisfied for now, he unsheathed an umbrella from his black coat, opened it, and held it over Patrice to stop the rain from beating down on her pathetic head.
"I believe," he spoke in eloquent confidence. "That a visit to a hospital is in order."
a/n: Aha ha...yeeeah, I know it's definitely been a while. If you're a reader of my Naruto fic, you'll know I'm the worst updater there is. Not that it's intentional, I'm just in college & more often than not, school work sucks me bone dry. Plus I was really wondering if I had what it took to write a good Kuroshitsuji fic. So I'm really, really sorry about how long it's taken to update. I will make no promises of when I can update, I'll just say that I'll get to it when I can.
Thank you everyone whose read & reviewed. Seriously, I'm so glad that these chapters have been well-received. I hope to hear more from you, because your thoughts & opinions help out most definitely. Again, thank you! Hopefully this chapter is to your liking & hopefully Ciel was not ooc.
-Constance
p.s. Tell me what you think via review. Positive or negative reviews are much more helpful than silence~